“Our main concern is that industry-funded groups and law firms are seeking to criminalize the peer review process by obtaining internal editorial comments of reviewers as a means to impeach or impugn scientists.”

It is amazing to me that people descend to insulting their host. The internet is a strange place – the energy would be much better spent acquiring real information and educating yourself on the facts. You wouldn’t do this face to face, and the opinions, while vulgar and stupid, do nothing to advance anyone’s state of knowledge.

That said, ditto on enjoying knowing a bit more about our courageous host. Keep up the great work!

Scientists do have a sense of humor and I am actually getting a good laugh out of the comments here but more so over at WUWT where these folks are coming from. Watts posted this pic and the comments there are hilarious. Very witty people. :)

Twitter posters are reporting that the court has granted the motion for climate scientist Michael Mann to intervene in the UVA email case. I don’t know if this report is true or not. Hopefully we will get some reliable news soon.

This science in NOT proven one way or the other…we have some say no and some say yes and some say maybe…even if the USA was to cut down on carbon all it would do is break the bank, and these people can’t see that. They also can’t see that NO Other COUNTRY will be on board with this…so it is futile. I would follow the MONEY and the one making it is the Michael Mann, in grants, so he can have his job along with the others and of course Al Gore, who doesn’t do a THING to help. He is a do what I say not what I do. and now he is a millionaire. there were many mistakes in his movie. So let’s go on to the next “GOD”.

You are advocating a scenario where we are all in a burning house but we all refuse to leave because nobody wants to be first. The US is more responsible for the CO2 that is in the air so we must take the lead to reduce emissions and then use diplomacy and economic pressure to get others like China to follow.

We have the technologies now that are needed to put us on the path of reducing our carbon emissions. The military, businesses, and everyday people are already taking action. It is time that we tell our leaders to also take action. There is still time but the window of opportunity is quickly closing. It is urgent that we act now.

Solving the climate change problem offers tremendous economic opportunity and has the benefit of securing our national security and improving our public health.

Kelly “They also can’t see that NO Other COUNTRY will be on board with this…”

Funnily enough that exact argument has been used in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, even in the UK. As it happens, Australia now has a carbon price set to go in a few months time. And Germany managed to instal, in December, twice as much solar PV as the USA did in the whole of 2011 – and they did it for half the $$ the US spent.

The US is fast moving right to the back of the queue on the chance to make money out of emissions reductions. Let alone look as though it’s taking responsibility to change its profligate habits with non-renewable resources. (I’m allowed to say that. I’m Australian and our per capita carbon footprint is even worse than yours.)

Scott, are you at all concerned by the lack of warming recently and how it affects your hypothesis that the planet is warming? After what period of observing a lack-of-warming will you agree that you were wrong about global warming?

Even if your hypothesis is correct, don’t you agree that the resources of humanity would be better spent providing clean water, food and energy to humans rather than trying to cool the planet by a degree Celsius? Nobody would notice the difference anyway. Can you walk into a room and tell us the temperature to within a degree? Do you really care if the temperature is a degree higher or lower?

If the backradiation or DLR from greenhouse gases is the cause of the greenhouse effect and increasing concentrations wil cause further warming and water vapour is by far the most powerful greenhouse gas and by far the most abundant at up to 2% of the atmosphere versus 0.04% for CO2 then can someone please tell me why parts of the globe with permanent high humidity and an equatorial climate – Singapore for example – are NOT the hottest places on Earth ?

The hottest places on Earth are equatorial desert locations – for example Timbuktu – and the temperature difference can approach 20 degrees C, heck even temperate desert locations are up to 15 degrees C hotter during summer and these are locations where the concentration of greenhouse gases is miniscule.

Rosco, the hottest places on earth are caused by an abundance of sunshine because the weather patterns in deserts allow few clouds year-round. There may be plenty of water vapor within the atmosphere above a desert but that water vapor cannot cool and turn into clouds. The vapor is still acting as a GHG.

Water vapor is indeed a very powerful GHG but increasing amounts of water vapor in the air are a response to increasing T. The increased water vapor acts to increase T even more and is what we call a positive feedback (increases the change already underway).

BTW, the arctic regions are warming faster than any other locations in the world due to human emission of heat-trapping GHGs. Your question appears to be more of a weather and not a climate change question. When discussing climate change we are describing the long term changes in T and not which places will be hottest or coolest.